Little Burde Chocolate

Little Burde Chocolate is a small bean to bar operation set in the fog drenched beach side of San Francisco, CA. The design was inspired by the beach culture of the Outer Sunset and its colorful neighborhood. They are designed to be the perfect size to pair with a cup of coffee.

JANE

JANE has been serving quality breakfast & lunch, as well as freshly baked pastries & bread since 2011. The company has evolved in the last five years and with their third location opening in winter 2016, we reexamined the brand. Working with JANE’s whimsical, eclectic style, we designed a new line of coffees & teas and refreshed the brand to bring sophistication and cohesiveness.

Brand refresh, packaging design

FRONT Café

As a former loading dock, FRONT is literally the front of several eclectic studios in the building located in Potrero Hill, San Francisco.

FRONT is a brand that focuses on quality, precision, and experimentation. The aesthetic is driven by functionality, while maintaining a clean and minimal look.

Brand development, packaging, product design

Sunup

Sunup is brewed from organic coffee beans that have never been roasted. It’s a simple recipe of only two ingredients: green coffee and cane sugar. It has natural antioxidants (chlorogenic acid) and is an excellent source of caffeine.

Based out of NYC, the product was first introduced as a 9.5 oz glass bottle. Two years later, we designed the 15 oz can with three variations.

Packaging, brand development, website

Mindful Meal

Mindful Meal is an eating experience where we examine and enjoy food through the lens of time. The five course dinner highlighted ingredients at various stages of life and evolved from fast to slow, young to old, light to complex.Food is immediate in our culture. We simply go to the store and buy fresh produce. We have learned to be more conscious about seasonal, locally grown, and organic foods, but one thing we give little thought to is the life span of ingredients -- specifically, the time it takes for food to grow, develop, and mature. How long does it take to harvest a single carrot or to raise a pig?We collaborated with various chefs to design a seasonal menu around this concept. Each course highlighted a different stage in life - Seed, Sprout, Bloom, Mature, and Decompose.A display of fresh ingredients invited guests to learn more about what they were eating. Displayed from youngest to oldest, each item revealed the time it took to grow and source of origin (i.e. a chicken egg takes 25 hours to develop).The meal began with a brief meditation that awakened our senses and introduced guests to mindful eating. The dinner was designed with interactive activities that engaged guests with their senses. Participants created their own curry blend for the SEED course by selecting a mixture of spices presented in test tubes. After toasting then grinding in a mortar and pestle, guests sprinkled the spices onto their own bowl of slow cooked egg in grain broth. Guests were also invited to experiment and customized their own cocktail, using unconventional ingredients like wheatgrass juice.

Photography by Sergey KolivaykoDesigned at Taste Workshop

Mod

Mod lets you work where you need to—and where you want to. A new breed of mobile professionals has emerged with demanding business needs and uncompromising lifestyle desires. The Mod serves both. From place to place and at every point along the way, the Mod experience connects you to its global network of environments through technology, cultural happenings and 5-star service so your day is as productive as it is enjoyable.

Mod has a whole new take on workday eating. How many of us compromise our health and quality standards while working on the go? How often do we grab something icky at the airport or eat “lunch” at a coffee chain? The fact is, finding nutritious options between meetings or while traveling is often impossible. So we eat junk, compromise our diets and make poor choices, which, over the long run, can really take a toll on our health goals and wellbeing.

Graze is a concept that informs our menu choices and portion sizes. Many dietitians will tell you that eating small meals throughout the day is preferable to eating large, heavy meals that weigh us down and cause fatigue. We’ve designed a menu to encourage grazing on smaller sized bites throughout the day. It’s a great way to regulate your metabolism, keep energy up and satisfy those little cravings for something sweet, salty, energizing or hydrating.

Inter-courses

Inter-courses is about relationships - the relationship between colors and flavors, the food and the table, and the participants with each other. It is about the magic that happens once one course is served to the next.

The main component of the evening revolved around a color placemat. Its colors determined the flavors and emotions of what was about to be served. The guests were directed to pick a side and follow the colors as they evolved. The folding of it in between courses speaks to the space and time in between a course and required participation from the guests, urging them to physically get closer over the course of the event.

Three courses of small bites and cocktails were served by Lisa and Leah from a rolling cart that they treated with colored strips, integrating the serving cart itself into the choreography.

Each course focused on an activity that required guests to share and collaborate.

1st Course Vibrant with warm tones, the first course plays with fluctuation and working to create balance.

A selection of cheese and crackers, vegetable stacks and dips were arranged on a serving tray that mimicked a see-saw. As guests took an item off of the see-saw, it would tilt to the other side and back as they dipped.

2nd CourseThe second course, with a calming palette of violet and chartreuse, provokes a little more intimacy. One long charcoal noodle was served on a platform with a candle lighting the dish. Served without utensils, guests were encouraged to start at the ends and meet in the middle.

3rd CourseThe third course is about challenge and anticipation, with a sweet ending. Each table was given a heart shaped balloon with a coffee cocktail. Inside the balloon were two colored strips of paper that determined the color combination for dessert and a sprinkle of edible glitter. Guests were instructed to use the popper at the end of the balloon and work together - one holding the string while the other popped, to retrieve the color strips. Upon being showered with glitter, each couple presented their colored strips to the cake bar and were served corresponding cake slices, one chocolate cake and one butter cake.

PARTING GIFTTo wrap up the evening, the colored placemat was rolled into a cone and used as a carrier for a bouquet of hydrangeas. Guests also received two baci di dama “lady kisses” cookies to take home.

Designed with Leah Rosenberg at Taste Workshop

Spirit Phenomena

I had the opportunity to collaborate with two very talented and dear friends, Leah Rosenberg and Yvonne Mouser. We were invited to take part in Root Division’s annual fundraiser event TASTE. Working with the exhibit theme ALCHEMY, we designed an interactive experience that transformed light and liquid into choreographed concoctions. With the help of our friends at Tekamaki, we had a custom built “light table” (an LCD monitor without polarization) and served our drinks in magic glasses that allowed imagery and animation to reveal through the bottom of the glass.

Inspired by alchemy and mythical potions, Spirit Phenomena is about chemistry and magic. It combines performance, technology, and spirits to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. We called these Elixirs to heal your modern ailments.

Hunt + Gather

A unique dinner challenge where guests "hunted” for local ingredients prior to the dinner and gathered to cook a spontaneous 4 course meal with Chef Leif.

THE HUNTA special bag with an official invite and “hunting” instructions was mailed to each guest. Each invite included unique ingredient descriptions (green, leafy, or bitter for example), and guests were challenged to interpret and source a fruit, vegetable, or herb to complement the meal. Participants were encouraged to forage, pick, or purchase their finds and gather information about its origin. The menu was ultimately determined by the particular choices and interpretations of each guest.

THE GATHEROnce the ingredients had been brought to the table, guests shared their choice with the group. With no preparation, the chef was challenged to spontaneously design, prepare and plate an entire 4 course meal based on the collective ingredients, with the addition of chef provided seafood and meat. All guests shared in the cooking process with our head chef.

Design by: Thought For Food

Fishima Wedding

A vegetable and herb garden inspired the theme for the wedding. Aaron and I really value fresh, local produce and so we came up with the idea of harvesting herbs and veggies on site with all of our guests.

The Save The Date was a dried edible date inside a box with a note “Save me!” On the back side of the box contained the details for the wedding. Keeping in line with the food & harvest theme, the invitation was screen printed onto light gray tea towels. A local food wheel was designed as part of the invite, where it showed the different fruits and vegetables in season every month of the year in San Francisco. Wrapped inside the tea towel were a trio of seed packets in witty custom designed pouches and a set of engraved wooden utensils to be used as plant markers. As part of the RSVP, each guest was asked to submit their favorite summer recipe. A cookbook was ultimately made out of everyone’s recipes and handed out at the wedding as favors. Since I love sweets, I couldn’t pass up on handing out some homemade berry crumble bars. They were placed in printed muslin bags, labeled “Thank you berry much!” For the welcome table, we displayed everyone’s handwritten recipes. Instead of having a traditional guest book, we had our guests find their recipes and leave us a note on the back. As a result, we have a box full of precious notes & recipes we’ll treasure forever.

Surf Pops

A food experience for the opening of the Deep Craft Atelier pop-up at Storefront Lab in San Francisco. For the event, Thought for Food took inspiration from the beach vendors that might hang out on a boardwalk, comb the beaches, or otherwise contribute to a culture rooted in California in the 1960's. What more fitting way to find refreshment than from a popsicle? Made for one, designed for quick consumption with flavors that reflected sun, sand and sea. We imagined how these three staples of either surf or skate life might taste and called them "Surf Pops".Our graphic coolers recalled another era, and came specially equipped with "salt" and "sand" (almond meal) cups so customers could dip their pop for an extra bonus taste/texture."Sun" was truly a taste of the sun with spicy and citrus flavors from habanero peppers, lime, and strips of mango. "Sand" was a nutty, and sweet, pudding like pop with almond, black sesame and caramel. Cucumber, vanilla and mint were the primary ingredients of "Sea," which visually gave people an interpretation of the sea as if frozen and put on a stick. Each frozen treat had a specially designed mini-surfboard that identified it's flavor.

Design by: Thought For Food

Spun Honey

An edible art installation for a gallery show at Root Division in San Francisco. The installation consists of a large round table covered in hexagon shaped tarts with cream cheese and flowers, which from above looks like a honeycomb. Above it was suspended a rod with six bees wax honey pots each filled with local wildflower honey. Each pot has small opening in the bottom to slowly drizzle its contents. The rod hangs from ropes that connect to a wheel and a series of pulleys ending in a simple hand crank. By spinning the wheel the ropes wind up and rotate the pots creating a concentric set of honey drizzle. As the event goes on the tarts are eaten and the honey covers more of the tarts.

Spun Honey concentrates on the process of how honey is made and consumed, inviting the participant to take part in a kinetic loop where a simple mechanical effort—a method inspired by traditional honey extraction—withdraws the honey and drizzles it on a tart. To perpetuate the cycle, participants are encouraged to take away a seed packet to plant the seeds for future honey.

Design by: Thought For Food

Hands On

One of the first things we learn as a toddler is how to use a spoon and fork. We are scolded for playing with our food, and discouraged to eat with our hands. We learn to be “civilized;” to carry a spoonful of soup to the mouth, to cut bite size pieces of steak, to twirl spaghetti around a fork. Connecting with food through tools is one of the first ways we interact with objects and learn survival.

In the Middle Ages, utensils were status symbols, used only by the wealthy. Although at the time it was not considered necessary, people used them to flaunt highly decorative utensils made of rare stones and metals.

With the exception of finger foods such as burgers, and sandwiches, we rarely use our bare hands to consume, not to mention create food. Utensils are certainly useful, however they further remove us from experiencing food by creating a layer between the food and the body. This meal attempts to remove that layer and explore a more direct relationship to the food we consume. How do we make a pesto sauce without knives? Is it possible to whip cream without a blender or whisk? How does one measure ingredients without a standard measuring cup? Does the eating experience alter radically if we remove the layer of the tool and have direct contact with our food at all times?

The Parameters• Participants will work in teams of two• Each team will create a three course meal• All ingredients and tools are within arms reach• All measurements are made with the hands• Participants are encouraged to create tools out of food

Design by: Thought For Food

24 Frames Per Second

For an annual party, we created an edible installation that played off time based media and initiated the first in a series of work based on the concept of a loop, or cycle. Mesmerized by how caramel is affected by heat and gravity, we chose caramel apples and popcorn for our snacks.

24 frames per second (an 8 second loop) divided a long narrow table into 8 segments of 24 "frames" (the standard amount of frames in 1 second of film). Each frame, labeled as timecode (the industry standard for labeling sequences), represents a piece of the story.

As part of the performance, we dipped the apples one by one into warm caramel. After dipping the apples, they were suspended and left to tell their own narrative based on time, heat, and human interaction. Caramel dripped onto the popcorn at varying speeds creating a combined new sweet/savory treat.

We captured the action in dramatic silhouettes by hanging white vellum frames, where guests were able to observe a constantly evolving story from a distance.

Design by: Thought For Food

A Winter's Tale

For the holiday open house at FRONT, food + art collective Thought For Food designed an edible art installation, A Winter’s Tale. The window displays in the Taste Workshop were transformed into a dramatic and festive landscape made of edible treats.

The first window featured a popcorn blizzard, where the 6.5 x 4.5 ft box was rigged as a giant popcorn maker. As popcorn spilled out of the popper, they would fall and collect towards the center of the box, where a blower would then lift them back into the air, creating a constant flow of movement. A simple rake was designed to gather the popcorn.

Tree trimming was the theme of the second window. Crab apples on wooden sticks were dipped in caramel and hung onto a twirling wireframe tree. As the motor-driven tree slowly rotated, the caramel apple ornaments drizzled onto the bed of popcorn below.

Guests were invited to interact with the displays by assembling their own paper cones and scooping popcorn, or picking a caramel apple off of the tree to eat. Some participants got creative and dipped the sticky apples directly into popcorn.

Specialty cocktails were served in the café, where guests experienced a different view of A Winter’s Tale. The windows, which were frosted on the café side, acted as light boxes, creating dramatic silhouettes of the performances.

Designed by Thought For Food at Taste Workshop

S'mores Box

A box made out of graham crackers contains all the ingredients you need to make 3 sets of s’mores. The marshmallows and chocolates are perfectly cut to fit on the crackers.

Fruit Leather Tangrams

The Mask You Live In

The Mask You Live In is a documentary by Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Boys and young men struggle to stay true to themselves while negotiating America’s narrow definition of masculinity. The film examines issues around masculinity and how it leads to behavior disorders, drugs, and violence.

Nest

Valence Effect

Graphics for a short film that merges emotional and physical attraction with scientific magnetism.

Designed at Autofuss

Gravity

Gravity is a science fiction film about the survival of two astronauts, after their space station gets hit by satellite debris. The film titles focuses and abstracts the Kessler Syndrome, the scenario when the collision between objects cause a cascade. Each collision generating debris increases the likelihood of further collisions, and this story is told through typography.

Designed at Autofuss

Time Capsule

Titles for a short film about an old man who digs up a time capsule from his youth. He finds a vial with blood and when he drinks it, is transformed back to a child. Using key elements from the film, the titles draw from the story of aging and the desire to recapture youth.